This year has gone in a flash what with lockdowns and isolations. Yes Wife and Number Two Son got it. Thankfully not seriously.
I did manage my 2021 Paint Challenge, but I didn’t finish the scary dozen. Sad face emoji. BUT I got The Dragon finished. Happy face emoji.
For 2022 I have four big projects to finish up. Bloodbowl, all printed up and now to be painted. Heroquest, paint the board and finish printing parts. Spacehulk, all the parts are printed and now need painting. Finally the modular terrain table, all the tiles are assembled and need painting/detailing.
Next year I need to carefully consider what I am printing rather than the scattershot approach of the last two years. And try and finish all the half started projects on my desk.
Yeh right! Like that’s going to happen!
My two products of the year are. Army Painter Dry Rust Effect paint, just brilliant. Secondly I have a new supplier of 3D printing Filament, GST3D. I have been getting some good results and they are European.
Another favourite thing. The Oldhammer Community Facebook page is running a “Paint a Bob” competition. During the month of September paint a figure sculpted by Bob Olley. To prevent any duplicity entrants had to post a photograph of their chosen model with this image as a backdrop.
I was undecided which model to pick, these wer my selections.
Ogre from Ral Partha
Skeleton from Essex
Chaos Dwarves from Essex
Sat at my desk this morning I decided on the Dwarves. Then I realised that they were a set of four, I dug the last one out.
I’ve been thinking about this project for the last three months and the best way to present a table.
I had a table coutesy of Electric Love and I had the game, Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago.
I wanted islands for the game. What was the best way to approach this? The initial thought was to create some irregular shapes and make the contours with foam. Although they would look realistic there was only one drawback, they would not fit together to create other shapes.
What to do?
I went back to the roots of gaming and thought about hexagons. Looking at how other people had made hex terrain I made a jig to cut the foam.
Things would have been set, albeit with some hard work, to have a table ready for Salute. Then two things conspired against this.
My Wife’s Grandfather died last year. 93 with a full (SS on the Eastern Front, travels to Africa in a minibus, mountaineering, greatgrandchildren and good-health) life, before you ask. The family wanted to clear his house, including his workshop.
And at the same time we got a new neighbour who after moving in decided she didn’t like the wooden floor in her lounge. So it was ripped out and thrown in a skip. It was 20mm engineered, if that means anything to anyone, solid wood. Ever since doing the floor in the hobby room I’ve wanted a nice floor in the workshop. I’ve never had the money (can you hear those violins?) but now was my chance.
One view of how the workshop used to look.
Another view
The optimum time to strip out the workshop, lay the floor ready for shelving and tools was now.
Trimming wood with my new circular saw. I still have all my fingers BTW
First iteration of furniture arrangement
Possibly final arrangement
This obviously cut into the preparation time for Salute. Through previous Salutes and laser cutting I had met another gamer, Christoph. Previously of the Grune Horde and now the Tabletop Knights. He was also planning to run a table with GA. I proposed we join forces.
During this time I also started a couple of money making (success so far €4) projects. When I have time and unrestricted access to YouTube, not very often as The Clone Wars and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are wayyy popular, I have been watching Mel’s Terrain Tutors channel. One personal project this year is to make a large amount of hedgeing for Flames of War/Tanks. To do this I would need a large amount of clump foliage. Mel showed how to make it relatively cheaply.
The main expense was purchasing the foam and over half of this cost was postage.
Don’t get me started on postage!
My Mothers old Kenwood came in handy
And you end up with a cup of foam
Mixing with PVA and Poundshop acrylic paint
A by-product of the manufacturing process was moss and litchen. Ground up even finer it was ideal for this.
Different colours to be blended when dry
The second money making project was a flockbox. I was not very happy with the quality of the grass tufts I had been making. It was OK but I knew I could do better. Mel’s channel had a video showing how he made static grass tufts. In it he used a flockbox.
I considered buying one but I couldn’t justify the forty quid PLUS the postage.
Luckily YouTube came to the rescue.
So with the help of eBay and my genius neighbour I made one.
The results are great.
Once all these jobs were done there was just about time to paint some scenery and paint my crew. See previous post.
Planning how to display my stock
The day of Salute arrived. The car had been packed the night before so we could set off without any panic or hesitation. Austrian Salute was at a new location, in Germany. The previous venue was looking for new owners, I wonder why? Christoph arrived and we set up. My heart fell a little. Although his modular terrain was a good concept the execution was not as good. No win for the best table then.
Walter giving his customary greeting speech
My tiny display table
Our gametable
The day went quickly although marred by another disasterous lunch. Why do culinary mishaps only happen to me?
On the plus side I did win second prize for the fantasy painting competition.
For the usual more eloquent description visit Sigur’s Battlebrush Studios site
genuine grumpy old tin 